21.11.11

Freight Corridors snippets

Putting the country’s biggest infrastructure project into high gear, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation has invited pre-qualification bid of Rs 8,000 crore for works between Rewari (Haryana) and Ikbalgarh (Gujarat) of the western corridor that will run from Delhi to Mumbai. The 625-km stretch of western corridor is part of the Rs 70,000 crore project which aims to build new rail tracks for seamless running of freight trains at speeds of 100 km per hour. The exclusive freight corridor will significantly reduce travel time and allow railways to run one of the world's largest freight operations based on international technology. DFCC has re-tendered after three consortiums that were selected failed to meet the norms which had a clause of mandatory requirement of a Japanese company as the lead partner. The selected Japanese firm will have at least 51% stake and will be responsible for execution of the contract. The 1,534-km western corridor is being fully funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The DFCC has also completed its land acquisition in Maharashtra, resolving contentious issues that had come up in Thane district. The corporation also completed one of the 54 major bridges near Sanjan in Gujarat falling between Surat and Mumbai. Upbeat with the speeding up of work on the corridor, railways has set up a new deadline to make UPA’s ambitious infrastructure project operational. The eastern corridor — Ludhiana to Dankuni — will be completed by December 2016 while phase 1 of western corridor — Rewari to Vadodra — will be over by December 2016 with the entire corridor (Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port) expected to be ready by March 2017. The first deadline set for the project was 2015 which was later extended to 2020. Considering the criticality of the project, Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is keeping a close watch on the progress. Sources said PMO will review the progress next week.

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